No Power in the 'Verse
by nicnac918
Summary: No matter how big the 'Verse gets, they'll still fall in together like gravity.


AN:Happy birthday Laranida! For her birthday she asked for a Gravity Falls/Firefly crossover. I was halfway through writing a completely different story for her request when this story, which is the one that I actually wanted to write, finally managed to coalesce into something coherent. Hopefully you like it, Laranida, and I hope you had a great birthday!

(Also, a very happy birthday to you too Lost_Heart. I'm going to start writing your present next; sorry it's going to be a bit late.)

(Also, also, warning for cliché fic title #633. But you know, the title is really only a cliché in the Firefly fandom, and this is really a Gravity Falls fic that just happens to be set in the Firefly 'Verse, so I think that means I'm okay. Right? Probably not, but that's what I'm going with.)

* * *

It starts like this. The Pines family lives on the seedy side of a seedy Border planet. It's the kind of place filled with bad men and worse women, all of them rotten straight through to the core. Filbrick Pines isn't a bad man by that standard, but he isn't a good man either, not by any standard. Filbrick is a grasping man, never satisfied with what he has and always reaching for what he feels he is owed. What exactly that is and by what virtue he's owed it is unclear, but that isn't what's important. What is important is he has three sons, though he looks at them as three potential tickets out.

Sherman Pines is the eldest and he's a solid, reliable type of person. Shermie is built for bigger things than the seedy side of a seedy Border planet, but he's not built for big things. He'll get himself out with a solid, reliable job and a house and a wife and a kid, but he'll never be great. Shermie will be fine and more importantly he'll be good his whole life through, and that'll be more than enough for him.

Stanley Pines is the youngest by a bare five minutes. Stan is a free spirit who won't stay on the seedy side of a seedy Border planet because he won't stay anywhere. He'll go wherever the wind and his whims take him, good or bad. There's only one thing in the 'Verse with the power to anchor Stan in place: his twin brother.

Stanford Pines is, of the three, the one who actually has the real potential to be a ticket out. Ford is a genius like nobody else, effortlessly brilliant at anything he applies his mind to. It is no surprise to anyone when a very exclusive school from the Core comes to offer Ford a scholarship. An extensive scholarship, one generous enough that if a student budgeted wisely and lived frugally, he might have enough left over to send money to his family each month. That sweeps away any of Filbrick's objections, and Ford's eagerness silences any their ma has. Stan still has objections, so many that they spill up out of him into the night sky, but he keeps his raging to himself. On the day Ford is due to leave, Stan is there to send his brother off with a hug and a slightly shaky smile. By the end of the day Stan is gone too, having boarded the first ship that would give him passage off-planet. That's the last time their parents see either of them.

Stan still calls sporadically and Ford diligently sends money every month and a letter every year. After the first letter, all of them are strange, referring to things that his parents don't remember ever happening, but they dismiss it; Ford has always been a strange child. The fifth letter comes packaged with a postcard for Stan, which their ma dutifully forwards on. Stan knows his brother better than their parents do, and he pours over that postcard for days and days until he cracks the code. Then he has to work even longer to figure out what the clue embedded in the code is telling him. Finally he gets a blacklight and shines it on the postcard revealing the message scrawled over it in invisible ink: "PLEASE COME! –FORD".

Two months after Stan decodes Ford's message, a ship crash happens out on the Rim, and Stanley Pines is reported dead. There are traces of grief around the edges of Filbrick's expression when he hears, but all he'll say about it is that's what you get when you abandon your family.

The expected letter from Ford doesn't come the next year or the next or the next or the next. The money keeps coming though, so his parents worry a little, but they don't fret. Eventually they save up enough to move to the nice side of their seedy Border planet. They live out the rest of their days there and their world never gets any bigger than it always was.

By the time eighteen years have passed after Stan's presumed death, it seems like the only remnants of the Pines family are Shermie's son, and the little twin babies born earlier that morning. The new parents are lovingly watching their little ones when a man appears in the doorway to their hospital room. There's a long stretch of silence and confusion before the man laughs sheepishly and says, "You probably don't recognize me, do ya kid? Though I guess you're not a kid anymore, even if you were only a little baby the last time I saw you."

The confusion continues for another moment, and then the new father says, "Uncle Stanford?" The man in the doorway doesn't correct him. "I thought you were holed away up in some fancy school somewhere. Actually, to be honest we hadn't heard from you in so long, we assumed you were dead."

"Heh. Well, rumors of my death and all that. But I have been trying to keep tabs, even if I haven't been all that good about it, and when I heard you had a pair of little ones on the way, I had to come see them. It's probably the only thing that could have drawn me out of hiding, as a matter of fact."

The new mother doesn't have any more family to her name than the twin's father does, but she's always liked the idea of family, so she smiles at the near-stranger and asks, "Would you like to hold them?"

The man looks surprised by the offer, but accepts it gratefully, cradling an infant in either arm like they're the most precious things in the world. "The boy's name is Mason, and the girl is Mabel," the mother tells him while the father snaps a picture.

"This is a really good-looking pair of kids you've got here," the man says. "Although, what's this here on Mason's forehead? Kind of looks like the Big Dipper."

"The Big Dipper?" the mother echoes.

"It's a constellation back on Earth-that-was."

"Wow Uncle Stanford, I knew you were smart, but I didn't realize you knew all the old constellations," the father says.

"I don't know them all or anything," the man replies. "I knew a guy who was a real nerd for stars and he knew most of them, but he talked about them so much that some stuck with me, like the Big Dipper. Which I guess makes you the Little Dipper, huh gremlin?"

"Oh, I like that! Little Dipper," the mother says.

There's a noise like a crash out in the hallway and the man glances nervously over his shoulder. "Something wrong?" the father asks.

"Nothing's wrong. Nothing except I'm sure that these two would rather be with their ma than a smelly old man." He passes the kids back to their mother and starts to edge toward the door.

"Uncle Stanford, you will come visit sometime, won't you?" the mother asks.

"If I can," the man replies, then he's gone, like he'd never even been there in the first place.

It starts like this. The Unification War ends three month too late for Dipper and Mabel Pines. Three months before the war ends, a man dressed in full Alliance regalia comes knocking on their door. The twins tell him that their parents are out at the moment, having gone off-planet for a week for a business trip for their mother, but they're due to return any time now. The man informs them in turn that the transport ship that Mr. and Mrs. Pines were in got caught in the crossfire of a battle, and that the two won't be returning ever.

The soldier doesn't say which side killed their parents, but Dipper doesn't care anyway. What he cares about is this man standing at their door, carefully pressed and perfectly polished, who's saying all the right words about being sorry for their loss, but he isn't, not really. Dipper's parents are dead, and this man is more annoyed about having to take the two of them to child services after delivering the news than anything. Dipper hates him for it and he hates the Alliance for it too.

The soldier doesn't say which side killed their parents, but Mabel knows anyway. If it had been the Independents she knows that this prototypical Alliance soldier would have no trouble laying the blame entirely at their feet. Instead he says things like "a terrible mistake was made" and "it was a horrific accident" and anything else he can to slither away from placing the blame on anyone. Mabel knows it was an Alliance ship that shot their parents and she hates the Alliance too.

Karen Reed also lost her parents at a relatively young age, and she promptly sold her father's business and used the extensive buy-out to fund her rising political star. Karen has neither a spouse nor children and one of her carefully selected advisors carefully suggests that having a family life to show off might raise her positive media presence. Karen chooses to adopt Dipper and Mabel for three reasons. One, they are adorable war orphans, which looks very good. Two, at twelve, Karen feels they're old enough for her to be able to deal with them on an adult level, rather than having to sink down to a child one. And three, they're twins, which means they can keep each other entertained while she has more important things to do. All that says most everything that needs to be said on what Karen is like as a guardian.

On their seventeenth birthday, Mabel comes bounding into Dipper's room early in the morning and crash-lands on his bed. Dipper groans feelingly, but knows better than to try to fall back to sleep. "Happy Birthday Dipper! Wake up; I got us a birthday surprise."

Dipper rolls over and stares blearily at his sister, but she doesn't seem to be carrying anything that could be the surprise she's talking about. "What is it?"

"A surprise! Check your bank account."

Feeling wary now, Dipper does so. The allowance they get paid once a week is pretty generous by their old standards back when they were living with their parents, but it's practically miserly compared to the circles Karen runs in. Still, both of them have been diligently saving it all up since they were thirteen and decided that there was no way they could keep living with Karen in her version of society forever. But when Dipper checks his current balance, he finds that the account is almost empty. "What did you do?"

"I bought us a spaceship," Mabel says, proud and excited beyond all measure.

"A ship? Mabel, what are we even going to do with a ship?" Dipper demands.

"You mean besides whatever we want?" Mabel pulls a scrapbook out of somewhere, and flips to a spot she had clearly bookmarked for this occasion. On the center of the page there is a picture of a man the two of them don't remember ever meeting cradling a pair of infants in his arms. The caption underneath reads "Me & Dipper & Great Uncle Stanford" but the Great Uncle Stanford part has been crossed out with a different colored pen and replaced with "GRUNKLE STAN!" Dipper looks at the picture for a minute, though he's seen it hundreds of times before, and then looks up at Mabel who is grinning widely at him. "We're going to go find our grunkle."

It starts like this. Fiddleford McGucket's mind is like an expansive city covered in an impossibly dense white fog. He knows there's a lot in there but the only things he can see are the ones he just happens to stumble across. It's not predictable at all either; he'll forget and remember the same thing five times in one day sometimes, and other times something will stick with him steady for weeks and weeks before being swallowed up again like it never existed. Most of the time it doesn't occur to him to wonder whether or not this is normal, but on the odd occasion it does he thinks that no one else's head could possibly be set-up the way his is, it seems much too inconvenient of a way of doing things.

One thought that comes more than it goes is that Fiddleford likes machines. He likes any kind of sophisticated tech, but spaceships are his favorite. He's always sneaking onto ships and then getting chased right off again when the crew catches him. If they're planetside when it happens they usually just kick him out, but if he can manage to stay hidden until they're out in the black, they'll throw him in one of the bunks, or the brig if the ship has one, and keep him fed and watered until they land, at which point Fiddleford sneaks off before they can hand him over to any authorities. One time the crew decides to just space him and be done with it, and Fiddleford has to spend a week sneaking around the ship, stealing rations whenever he gets the rare opportunity. After that trip Fiddleford swears to himself that he'll never sneak onto a ship again, a promise he promptly forgets five hours later.

He doesn't spend all his time on ships; he wanders around planetside too. Sometimes he thinks maybe he's looking for something, but he can never think what it might be or if he'll recognize when he finds it or if he did find it already and failed to recognize it. Other times he thinks maybe he's not looking for something, but looking to get away from something, shadowy figures that haunt dreams that he can't remember better than he can anything else. And then there's times he thinks he just wanders because he can't think what else he ought to do.

He winds up in a junkyard with a broken-down old ship that somehow managed to avoid getting scrapped for parts taking up most of the space. He looks at the ship and suddenly knows that he knows how to fix it up. So he settles down inside the ship and starts doing just that.

Sometime after he's gotten the ship as fixed as he can with the parts he can get his hands on in the dump, someone comes and takes it. Fiddleford hears them coming from back in the engine room, and the sound of stomping feet puts his mind at shadowy figures from dreams he doesn't remember and harsh voices shouting "let's just throw the crazy old man out the airlock," and Fiddleford hides. He hides, but also he listens and he waits.

"You're going to hurt _The Mystery Ship_ 's feelings if you keep talking about her like that," says a female voice that Fiddleford has never heard before.

"I'm not saying she's not a good ship, but look at this engine room. I don't know all that much about ship engines, but I know enough to know that she's not fit to fly like this and there's no way you and I are going to be able to fix her ourselves. Also, _The Mystery Ship_?" replies a male voice.

"Because she's going to help us solve the mystery of what happened to Grunkle Stan, duh," the girl says.

"Well I like the idea, but don't you think that name's a little much?"

"No such thing as too much! But yeah, maybe it is a little on the nose. Don't worry, I'll come up with something perfect."

"I guess it doesn't really matter what we call her all that much anyway, not if we can't get you off the ground, huh girl?" the boys says.

Fiddleford decides he likes these voices. They sound trustworthy and more importantly they sound like they really do like his ship. So he crawls down out of the little space he'd been wedged in and announces, "I can fix 'er up."

The boy and the girl both stare at him in shock. The boy recovers first, saying, "Mabel, you bought us a ship that has someone squatting in it?"

"No, didn't you hear him, Dipper? I bought us a ship with a live-in mechanic," says Mabel.

Dipper looks at Fiddleford skeptically. "You really think that you can fix our ship?"

"I fixed 'er this much. I reckon I woulda already been done, but they ain't got all the parts I needed down at the dump."

"What other parts did you need?" Dipper asks. Fiddleford starts listing them and telling the two what he needs the parts for, and Dipper looks steadily more impressed. When Fiddleford finishes his list, Dipper says, "If we could somehow get our hands on all those parts and bring them to you, would you be willing to finish repairing the ship? Mabel spent almost all our money buying her, so we couldn't really pay you except in room and board. Actually, probably just room."

"I'll take it!" Fiddleford shouts gleefully. He's never had anyone want him to stay around before, not that he can remember.

"Perfect!" Mabel says. "Hear that _Mystery_? We're going to have you up and running in no time."

It starts like this. The Northwest family is old money with a lot of strong political connections, so Pacifica Northwest learns practically from the cradle how to look down on the type of people that her parents refer to as commoners. She also learns the art of delicately looking down on people in her social circle, with precise instructions on how delicate she needs to be with which types of people. Pacifica learns how to network with politicians and to make business associates and to charm people without ever letting them forget she's a Northwest and therefore better than them.

Karen Reed is someone that calls for increased delicacy over the years. Even though her money is so new it's, as Pacifica's mother puts it, "practically still warm from printing," her political clout is growing almost every day. The Pines twins – as they insist on being called even after Ms. Reed adopted them – are another matter entirely. They might have been given some leeway for their former status as commoners by virtue of their adopted mother's status, but the two of them absolutely refuse to recognize that they were part of Society now and behave accordingly. As such, Pacifica is given almost full-range to be a vicious as she wanted.

After her first few encounters with them, Pacifica opts instead to put on an air of ignoring Dipper and Mabel entirely. Her parents applaud her good sense with this approach. Now there's no chance of Ms. Reed witnessing something that she would be obligated to take offense to and Pacifica communicates that she believes the Pines twins to be beneath her notice.

"They are beneath my notice," Pacifica says as haughtily as she can manage, and that is the end of that conversation.

Perhaps they should be beneath her notice, everything Pacifica has ever been taught says as much, but she can't tear her eyes away. The two of them fight and tease and poke fun at each other, but under that they remain fiercely loyal. If asked, Pacifica would say she loved her parents, because they were her parents, but Dipper and Mabel really loved each other, not because of a familial obligation, but because they were family. The two of them were also absolutely fearless to Pacifica eyes. She'd seen them be mocked by a whole room of people and not bat an eyelash, and seen Ms. Reed furiously angry with them which would have them repentant, but uncowed. Pacifica didn't think that Ms. Reed ever had a bell, but if she did, Pacifica knows that Dipper would have ripped it out of her hand, and then Mabel would have thrown it to the ground and stomped on it.

Because she's always watching them from the corner of her eye, Pacifica notices immediately when the two of them start acting stranger than usual. They're both very clever, but neither of them are subtle, especially compared to Pacifica. It isn't very long at all before she finds her way to the ship they've bought and are working on in secret.

"I'll admit, this is actually nicer than I was expecting it to be," Pacifica announces as she enters. Dipper and Mabel turn to her with impossibly wide eyes, which go impossibly wider when they see the stack of bills she's fanning herself with.

"Pacifica! What are you doing here?" Mabel asks.

"How did you find us?" Dipper continues. "Actually, why did you find us? I didn't think you even noticed we existed."

Pacifica rolls her eyes. "Of course I know you both exist. I also know that you're planning on running away, but you're short on funds to finish fixing your ship up." She looks pointedly down at the money in her hands.

"What do you want?" Dipper asks, narrowing his eyes at her.

"I want to be captain, but since I assume one of you has already claimed that title, I'll settle for co-captain."

"Dipper and I are both already co-captains," Mabel volunteers cheerfully. "I'm co-captain and pilot and he's co-captain and navigator. And Fiddleford, who's around here somewhere, is our mechanic."

"Since Mabel and I are the ones who actually bought _Mystery,_ we're staying co-captains. You can be first mate."

Pacifica grins, knowing now that she's going to get exactly what she wanted. "Alright, I'll throw my money into the ring on three conditions. First, I want to be called first officer; first mate sounds too plebian. Second, my parents are off-planet on a business deal for the next four days, and we need to be gone before they get back. Lastly, from now on I'm in charge of our money."

They take off three days later. As soon as they leave the atmosphere Pacifica takes unabashed glee in throwing a small bell out of the airlock.

It starts like this. In 2506 Wendy Corduroy is a young girl with three baby brothers and a father and a mother. In 2511 Wendy Corduroy is a teenager with three little brothers and a father who needs all the help he can get wrangling rowdy children. In 2516 Wendy is a young women with three brothers who can mostly look after themselves and a father who's ready to push her out of the nest head first.

Wendy has two options: she can get to marrying or get to working. She's about as liable to marry anyone from her little town as she is to marry one of her own brothers, so that's out, and none of the career paths, to use the term exceedingly generously, available to her in her little town appeal to her in the slightest, so that's out too. Unfortunately, there aren't that many opportunities that come knocking when you live on a little moon out in the Rim.

One day a Firefly-class starship – one of the old Series Three ones, which Wendy likes so much better than the new ones they've started making – comes in for the kind of landing that suggests the pilot is under heavy medication. Wendy watches from a distance as the bay door drops open and a brown-haired boy comes out striding with a purpose toward town accompanied by a blonde girl. After they leave a brown-hair girl comes out too and walks aimlessly around the ship, probably just stretching her legs.

Wendy approaches the girl and asks, "What's up with your pilot?"

"I'm doing fine, thanks for asking! My name's Mabel, what's yours?"

"Wendy. You sure you aren't drunk, Mabel? Because that was some landing."

"What, you think you could do better?" Mabel demands fiercely, crossing her arms.

"Yeah I do. I'm a way better pilot than you are. I'm a better pilot than anyone on this planet." Both of these things are true, but neither of them mean all that much.

What does mean something is the way Wendy keeps up her projected air of cool attitude in the face of Mabel's glaring. She doesn't even falter when Mabel suddenly breaks, throwing her arms around Wendy in a hug and shrieking "You're hired!" right in Wendy's ear.

Dipper is as impressed with Wendy's cool as Mabel was when he returns, but Pacifica glares daggers at all three of them. Dipper says some things to her quietly, most of which Wendy doesn't catch, but definitely includes the word "loop-de-loops" and Pacifica relents to let Wendy show them what she can do.

Wendy isn't a great pilot by any stretch, but a lot of that is owed to inexperience and unfamiliarity with some of the non-standard modifications that Fiddleford has given _Mystery_. She is a solid pilot though, and it's clear she'll get better with time and practice. At any rate she's already much better than Mabel, who has always had a lot more enthusiasm than talent and even that has been starting to wane recently.

There's a bit of hesitation in her as Wendy goes to tell her dad she's leaving and she doesn't know when she'll be back, but her dad just wraps her up in a hug and says that he knew something would turn up for her sooner or later. And that's that.

It starts like this. Jesús Alzamirano Ramírez has lived an unremarkable life. Soos tends to go with the flow, and up until this point the flow hasn't led him anywhere noteworthy. And then quite suddenly it does.

Soos is walking down the street in the center of town when he spots something lying in the road. It's a fiddly little tool used to work on a ship's engine. Soos picks it up, sticks it in his pocket, and heads off in the same direction he spotted an old man with his arms full of equipment going earlier. The docks are busy when Soos arrives, but luckily he spots the old man as he's heading up into his ship. Soos chases after him and tries calling to him a few times, but the man never hears. In the ends, Soos follows the old man right into the engine room, and then all he can do is stand there in awe and watch.

Soos is pretty handy with fixing things, and he likes to think he knows a thing or two about engines, but the old man is clearly a master. He jumps from place to place effortlessly and always seems to know exactly where to find the tool or piece he needs from those scattered haphazardly across the ground, barely even looking as he picks whatever it is up and moves on to the next thing. The purpose of what he's doing mostly goes right over Soos's head, but what does make sense amaze him.

The old man slams a panel shut and Soos notices the way it wobbles a little like it's not on quite right. That could be dangerous in the wrong situation, but Soos doesn't want to distract the old man for something as small as a loose panel, so he fixes it himself. Then Soos notices another loose panel, and then a wire that's frayed, and then part after part after part that all need a little bit of easy maintenance. The next thing he knows, an hour has passed, the old man has disappeared somewhere deep within the engine, and there's a blonde girl leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

"Oh hey dude. That old dude dropped this tool back in town and I was just bringing it back. And then I guess I just started fixing things. This is a really nice engine you've got, by the way."

"Thanks," she says archly. "Though Fiddleford is the one who's done all the work down here and made all the custom modifications. One of the reasons I couldn't fire him even if I wanted to. That and Dipper and Mabel would pitch a fit, probably start calling him an institution or something."

"You want to _fire_ him?"

"I said 'if.' Why would I want to fire him; he's a genius that works for room and board. There's nothing we could ask him to do with _Mystery_ 's engines that he couldn't pull off. Except basic maintenance. And I for one refuse to wind up drifting because we blew a fuse or something stupid and preventable like that." She looks around the room, her eyes lingering on some of the repairs Soos has made, and then nods once and stands up straight. "We're scheduled to ship out tomorrow at noon. If you're late, then we aren't waiting for you." She turns and leaves.

It takes Soos a full three hours to realize he has a new job.

It starts like this. Grenda Grendinator has known ever since she was too young to really understand what it means that she wants to be a Companion when she grows up. She tells anyone who will listen, and they all have gentle, well-meaning discouragement to offer in return. "Are you sure that's what you want to do?" which might at least be prudish-ness and "Do you think that's the right career for you?" and "Wouldn't you rather do something you're more suited to?" There's also one boy from her class who is neither gentle nor well-meaning that says to her straight out, "Like you could be a Companion. You'd be lucky to make money as a cheap whore."

The only person to never offer any discouragement is Grenda's best friend. After that comment from the boy, Grenda asks her friend for an honest view of Grenda's chances. The carefully considered reply is, "I think other people think you cannot be a Companion because you can be big and loud and a little abrasive. But I think when the Companion's Guild sees you, they will know that big and loud and a little abrasive is your way of being beautiful." This is of course exactly right.

Candy Chiu, unlike her best friend, grows up with no idea of what she wants to be, which suits her family just fine. They had already decided for her before she was born that she was going to be a doctor and almost as soon as she's out of her mother's womb they start pushing her through accelerated program after accelerated program. Candy applies herself as hard as she can because that's just the kind of person she is and graduates from medical school at 17. To her surprise she discovers she actually likes being a doctor; she likes saving people.

Almost as soon as she realizes that, something begins to nag at her. She likes saving people, but she doesn't think there's a single person out there that she can point to and say, "They're alive because of me." The hospital she works at is overflowing with doctors, and if she hadn't been there then someone else would have been. Candy likes being a doctor, but she wants to be a doctor somewhere where she makes a real difference. Where adequate medical care isn't a given, it's a blessing.

Candy is reluctant to share any of this with Grenda. Big and loud and a little bit abrasive has proven to be far more popular than anyone ever expected, and Candy doesn't want Grenda to think that she's trying to drag her friend away from the life she always wanted. But Candy plucks up her nerve and tells Grenda anyway because best friends are honest with each other.

Grenda lets out an explosive sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Do you have any idea how boring all the boys around here are? Let's go have an adventure!"

So they do, the two of them hopping from place to place, from planet to planet, with no plans and no idea what's going to happen next. It's fun at first. Grenda meets all kinds of interesting people, and Candy starts to lose track of how many people she's made a real difference for. But after months and months flitting around from place to place, both of them start to feel homesick, but not for the home they left. They're homesick for familiarity, for the ability to share a meal with the same people every day and go to sleep in the same place every night. Neither of them have any idea what to do about that.

One day Grenda comes rushing back from a job extremely early and starts haphazardly throwing things into her bag. "Quick, get your stuff packed and let's go."

Candy does as she's asked without question and follows Grenda out and down the road. "Are we getting kicked off the planet?" she asks. That's would be something new and exciting.

"Not exactly. I mean, that guy did call me a whore and I punched him, so he's probably pretty mad about that, but whatever."

"So where are we rushing to?"

"Well, when I was at the party earlier I met this girl with a fabulous dress, which she made by herself, by the way. Anyway, I was talking to her and she started telling me about all these adventures she and her crew have had. Apparently Mabel and her twin brother own a ship together and they and their crew live on the ship full time and are traveling the 'Verse on a mission to find their long-lost uncle," Grenda says.

"That sounds exciting," Candy replies, not quite seeing the point yet, but she has faith Grenda has one.

"Super exciting. And Mabel told me that she's been wanting to get a ship's doctor because they don't have one, but their accountant said that the only way they could afford to have another crew member is if they found someone with a reliable source of income to rent out one of their shuttles."

Candy's eyes widen. "Are you saying…?"

Grenda stops right in front of a Firefly-class ship and spreads her arms out wide. "I'm saying welcome to our new home."

It starts like this. It takes them nearly a year to finally track down Stan, and when they do find him, it doesn't have a particularly dramatic lead-up. They've just finished a job, and Dipper is stopping by a local bar to ask around and see if they could get another lead on their grunkle when suddenly there he is, a near-stranger with a familiar face sitting on a bar stool. It's so unexpected that it's only luck that Mabel happens to be with Dipper at the time.

Mabel shrieks, "Grunkle Stan!" and throws her arms around the man, heedless of Dipper's comments that they can't even be sure it's really him yet. It doesn't matter to Mabel that she only has one picture of him taken almost two decades ago, she knows it's him immediately and completely. She's right of course, and that Stan is able to produce their names without them having to introduce themselves is proof enough for Dipper, and the copy of the photo that Mabel always carries in her pocket convinces Stan.

The three of them head back to _Mystery_ , and then the entire crew gathers around, eager to meet the man they've spent so much time searching for. Mabel is overflowing, seemingly determined to catch Stan up on the entirety of the last eighteen years of her and Dipper's lives in one sitting. Everyone else wants to share their part in various stories too and it's late in the night before Soos thinks to ask, "So what have you been up to for all these years, Mr. Pines?"

Stan turns palpably nervous as he answers, "You know, a little of this, a little of that. I actually have a job I'm working on now, and I've been looking for a crew to help me pull it off."

"Exactly how illegal is this job and, more importantly, how much is it going to cost us?" Pacifica says. No one thinks to disagree with her priorities. A lot of them have their own reasons to hate the Alliance and its laws, and all of them have reason enough to know that what's legal and what's right aren't always the same thing. Most of them would argue that what's right is more important than their bank account, but what's legal, not so much.

"Well, you know, legality is all relative anyway, and as for how much it's going to cost…"

An argument breaks out. Each side has its own points and everyone has their own point of view, but they know that ultimately the only two opinions that matter are those of their co-captains. Mabel is Stan's staunchest defender, but Dipper doesn't think they can trust someone they've only just met, family or no.

It might have gone on indefinitely, but eventually Stan has enough. "The kid's right, none of you have any reason to trust me yet. But look into my eyes. You really think I'm a bad guy? These past thirty-six years everything I've worked for, everything I care about, it's all for this family. I'm so close now, and no matter what I'm not screwing this up again. So I think the real question is, can I trust you?"

It's the right thing to say. Dipper and Mabel share a long speaking look before Mabel turns back to Stan beaming and says, "Yes, definitely, absolutely!"

Dipper adds a small smile of his own and says, "One hundred percent."

Stan's answering grin is crooked, but it's more genuine for that. "Alright then!" He reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a battered old brochure that looks like it might have been with him straight through those thirty-six years. On the front of it is a picture of a yellow triangle with a single eye and the words "The Cipher Institute." "Let's get started."

It starts like this. Ford wakes up screaming.

This isn't unusual. Ford doesn't sleep much anymore, only resting in fitful snatches when his eyes refuse to stay open any longer, but when he does, he always has nightmares. Sometimes they're full of slow dripping dread with his dream-self going about mundane business but always catching glimpses of shadowy figures out of the corner of his eye and knowing that they're coming for him. Other times they're packed with adrenaline-fueled terror, giant yellow triangles turned monstrous, chasing Ford down so they can rip him limb from limb. The worst are the ones where he's back home again and running around with Stan like he used too. Those ones don't seem like nightmares at all, not until he wakes up and remembers those days are gone. Ford doesn't sleep much anymore, but when he does, he always wakes up screaming.

Ford also wakes up naked. This is less common, but not that strange. Usually the Institute has them dressed in scrubs or hospital gowns. There are also wardrobes full of nice clothes, for when something is happening that requires that their "students" look presentable. But there are times when the researchers decide for whatever reason that they want him naked, so waking up in that condition is something Ford is reasonably used to.

What disconcerts him is that Ford wakes up with no idea where he is, surrounded by people he doesn't recognize. Ford's mind might be fractured, possibly beyond any hope of repair, but he's sure that he's seen every room in the Institute by now, and knows every single staff member and student there. His emotions are a jumbled mix of joy at being free of that place, and fear at where he might have been freed to.

"Ford. Ford. Stanford! Sixer! Sixer, it's okay; you're safe now."

Ford recognizes the voice when he hadn't the face, and thinks that he hasn't escaped the Institute after all; he's only woken up inside of another dream. It strikes him as odd, though, that he would be dreaming of Stan aged like Ford has, rather than still as his rambunctious seventeen year old self.

"Stanford Pines? I remember you." This voice is soft and halting, and Ford only hears it because at some point after recognizing Stan his screams tapered off. Ford glances to the side and finds that the remembrance is reciprocal, though two seconds ago he didn't have any recollection of Fiddleford. Fiddleford was Ford's roommate, back when the Institute was still making some effort to act like a school, but he had disappeared a long time ago, and Ford had forgotten all about him until now.

A coat is dropped over Ford's shoulders, and he looks behind him to see who placed it there. There's a boy who Ford thinks must be the actual owner of the jacket and a girl with a tight grip on the boys arm. Ford looks at them rather than help Stan arrange the jacket around himself more fully and decides they must be twins. Then he notices the girl's hair curls and amends that to Pines twins, about the same age as Ford and Stan were before they split. Something inside Ford settles at that.

He turns around and clutches his brother close to him. He sobs into Stan's chest and chooses, for the moment at least, to believe that this is real.

It ends like this. Ford is sitting up in a chair on the bridge. Candy had pushed to keep him down in the infirmary at first, but he'd been obviously uncomfortable in the quiet. So he was moved right in the middle of the action, where he precedes to scribble continuously in one of Dipper's journals that he grabbed. A casual viewer might even wonder why he insisted in moving at all when he seems to be ignoring everyone around him, but Candy sees the way he no longer flinches away from her automatically as she hovers over her newest patient, and she doesn't complain.

Sitting on Ford's one side is Fiddleford, who watches everything that Ford writes down with avid attention, glimmers of understanding and remembrance flickering through his gaze. Occasionally Fiddleford will even pull a pen out from behind his ear and lean over to make some scribbles of his own. Whenever he does, Ford will lean back to allow him space, then nod furiously at whatever Fiddleford has written, before returning to his own writing with renewed vigor.

On Ford's other side is Stan. He started out watching what Ford was writing too, but it all went way over his head, so he turns back to the rest of the crew and starts sharing stories about when he and Ford were kids. These stories are accompanied by expansive gestures that sometimes draw Stan far enough away from Ford that the two of them are no longer touching. Whenever that happens Ford's shoulders tense until Stan brushes up against him again. After about twenty minutes Stan silently adjusts his chair so that his and Ford's legs are pressed up against each other and then goes right on talking.

Dipper and Mabel and Grenda are leaning against the bulkheads listening animatedly to Stan's stories, laughing and gasping at all the right places. Pacifica claimed to be bored by the stories, but she's right there with them anyway. Maybe it's because despite what she said, she's just as interested as everyone else. Or maybe it's because of Dipper's arm around her waist, which everyone has mutually and silently agreed that she would have broken off by now if she didn't want it there. Probably, from both the rapt attention in her eyes and the way she leans her head against Dipper's shoulder after a while, it's a little of both.

Soos is supposed to be down in the engine, making sure everything is still running smoothly after their crazy escape. Despite that, he finds frequent excuses to wander up to the bridge for long stretches of time, and no one gainsays him or offers a word of complaint.

Wendy sits in the pilot's chair, completely unperturbed by having her space invaded. Inside, her mind is a flurry of different plans and maneuvers and ideas of how to avoid being tracked and how to make sure they never come across another man with bright blue gloves and a yellow triangle on his lapel. But outwardly, Wendy is the picture of cool and collected, her chair leaned back and her boots propped up against her console as she surveys the rest of the crew.

It ends like this. Or maybe, this is how it starts.


End file.
